14 Ways to Achieve Zen on Your Morning Subway Commute

You’ve left the house without your morning coffee. Your train never comes. Someone is listening to EDM without their earplugs in. Or checking their voicemail on speaker. The card reader says your metro card has insufficient funds. You walk into a closed turnstile. Someone is walking too slowly in front of you up the stairs and there’s not enough room to pass them. Or maybe you drove —- well, you get the idea.

Worry no more.

With these 14 options, you may finally be able to enter that special place of Zen — usually reserved for yoga classes and rare moments of unadulterated isolation — while on your hectic morning subway commute.

Morning Commute Survival

1. Single out a lone piece of trash and meditate on its beauty.

Find a lone piece of trash, such as a plastic bag, and imagine the way it dances in the wind is beautiful and deeply symbolic like that one scene in American Beauty. An empty Snapple bottle rolling around a subway will also do.

2. Play Enya’s The Very Best of greatest hits album in full.

The LA Times once published the headline “If Enya’s Music Doesn’t Soothe You, You’re Probably Not Human,” which pretty much says it all. If you’re looking to take the edge off the world in the morning, maybe you’ll find solace in the mesmerizing textures of classic guilty-pleasure artist Enya.

3. Download an app with hypnotizing nature sounds and play on loop.

Listen to the gentle lullabies found in nature (and surprisingly urbanity too) with White Noise, which lets you pick from sounds such as beach waves and extreme rain. Also, there’s “oscillating fan” and “train,” if you can’t get enough of that sound while you’re already aboard one.

4. Imagine the crowded streets are filled with puppies on their way to work, not humans.

A good way to forgive loud and disrespectful commuters is to imagine that they’re puppies on their way to work, and they just want a little attention.

5. Bring an actual animal on the subway and cuddle with it.

Soft animals, such as bunnies, are preferable. To enter maximum chill mode, make sure your body is sprawled across the seats.

8. Get lost in the preparation of a cake.

9. Find a stranger’s shoulder and fall asleep on it.

An alternative to completely ignoring the humans around you is cozying up on their shoulders and making a friend or two. You get a friend and a free pillow.

10. Set up a hammock so you don’t have to use a shoulder.

Hammocks are nice and compact which makes them the perfect relaxation tool for an on-the-go subway experience. Kick back and pretend you’re somewhere on a sunny beach and not underground surrounded in oil composites and black mold.

14. Find a subtle way to reclaim your personal space.

Let passengers know that the space is yours just as much as it is theirs by pulling out an umbrella or another everyday item that can double as a spacial divider. It sends the message across without being too obvious.